The most amazing man on earth (no not me!)
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2010
1
22
86
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Hampi, Karnataka, India
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Due to a combination of heavy rain and the singular method of crossing being inappropriately small boats, the meat eating, alcohol drinking side of the river was off limits. Leaving us filthy heathens to suffer the lifestyle of the faithful...
After checking in an having a bit of a snooze, we went off exploring. Negotiating Hampi's improbable rock formations, we saw some oldish (about 500 years) stuff, some ancient stone carved pornography, a few cows and some frogs. After several hours perambulation, we headed towards a small white and red temple down by the riverside and were approached by an old man in pyjamas with a big bushy beard and yellow bits where there should be white bits in his eyes. He introduced himself as somesort of Ayurvedicyogameditationninjasamurai Master followed by a nodding of the head and an eager smile that said 'I know, I can't believe how amazing I am either'. After his introduction he proceeded to show us some of his skills.... First he put a dirty towel on my head, pressed his thumbs into my eyes and asked if I could see god. I said no, and was slightly concerned about the kaleidoscope of colours the pressure on my retinas was creating. He then made me breathe really fast through my nose, then proclaimed that something or other had happened.
Next, he imparted on us a secret miracle cure for everything of his own devising. His bold claims included: preventing hair loss, soothing aching joints, correcting poor eyesight, slowing the aging process and - he took me aside for this bit - it would imbue the recipient with long and powerful sex.
Next came the best bit, a demonstration of his ninja skills. What followed was a very enthusiastic, with much howling, battle with nobody. I asked him what his style was and he listed pretty much all of them. After the demo, he started talking about kung fu movies and told us about the time he'd met Jackie Chan (and probably taught him all he knows).
As we were leaving, we saw a massive bug that I have christened Squillipede, then went back into town for no alcohol and vegetarian food. *Due to an incident with my camera (I'll be stopping by Panasonic and having a word if I make it to Japan) all pictures and video of this episode have been faithfully reconstructed in biro.
The next morning we went to go see Lakshmi the temple elephant taking her daily bath in the river. It was all very nice until the elephant keeper started hitting Lakshmi in the face with a stick (which kind of broke the spell for me).
After a spot of breakfast we went to the main temple, saw a wedding, some really disgusting monkeys (yep I took pictures), some more ancient rock porn and paid some guys in fancy dress far too much money for doing crap magic. Later we went for a wander around some more ruins, found a massive Ganesh (Mr elephant-for-a-face) statue, met an owl, then found a nice peaceful spot where we missed the sunset.
The next day we hired crappy bikes and investigated further afield. Saw loads more old stuff, some inexplicable crabs, some edible cows, got really sunburned and was probably not far off heatstroke (which is a fairly typical end to a bike ride for me). In the evening we discovered a restaurant with a secret code for chicken and sold under-the-counter contraband rum at extortionate prices. Unfortunately the chicken needed to be pre-ordered earlier in the day. The rum was good though.
Bored of temples, the last day of Hampi was spent wandering through the banana plantations. We saw loads of tiny little frogs, bought some coconuts off some yokels, learned about and found some waterfalls, saw some guys fishing with nets and visited a far-too-small farm.
After a bit of lunch we caught the fastest autorickshaw in town to Hospet (piloted by one Mohinder Schumacher) where we boarded our respective buses to our next destinations. Mine would be another eventful journey...
**it took a while, but I've finally recovered the lost pictures from Hampi. All uploaded now!**
